Pressing for Iraqi's Overthrow, U.S. Appeals for Arab Support

By BARBARA CROSSETTE

Published: December 9, 1998

The Clinton Administration made an open appeal yesterday for Arab support in its campaign to overthrow President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

The national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, said in remarks prepared for a speech at Stanford University, ''Saddam's continued misrule of Iraq is harmful to the Middle East as a whole.'' He laid out economic and political reasons why the region should welcome a new Iraqi Government.

''The sooner the situation is Iraq is normalized,'' he said, ''the sooner the people of the Middle East can get on with the business of building a more stable region and the more likely we are to realize our goal of seeing the region integrated, with consent of its people, into the international system.''

His address was for an event to honor a former Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, on the publication of his new book, ''In the Stream of History.''

Mr. Berger acknowledged that the recent American preoccupation with the overthrow of President Hussein was linked to a realization that Washington's long-term policy of containment of Iraq was under serious challenge.

''Through constant confrontation, our policy of containing Iraq has been successful,'' he said. ''But that does not mean that by itself it is sustainable over the long run.''

He also conceded that sanctions, imposed in 1990 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, might not be viable indefinitely. Russia and France are likely to renew pressure in coming weeks to lift at least the oil embargo on Iraq if arms inspections now being resumed there go relatively smoothly.

Other members of the United Nations Security Council are lukewarm at best in supporting the embargo.

''The longer this standoff continues,'' Mr. Berger said, ''the harder it will be to maintain the international support we have built for our policy. Even the toughest of all sanctions regimes in history becomes harder to sustain over time.''

Mr. Berger's speech followed one on Thursday by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright at Emory University. She said the American policy of containment of Iraq had changed to one of ''containment plus regime change.''

Ms. Albright also said the United States was working with Iraqi opposition groups. President Clinton first announced that policy publicly on Nov. 15, when he withdrew the threat of American bombing of Iraq after Mr. Hussein ended a ban on arms inspections.

Even officials in the Administration have doubts about the efficacy of supporting the splintered Iraqi opposition. But exiles say that there has been a notable increase in American activity along those lines as Washington looks for allies in a broader range of groups than in the past.

Abbas Mehdi, chairman of the Union of Independent Iraqis, which links dozens of small groups based in the United States, said in an interview yesterday that exile organizations had been told by American officials and officials in the region that the American Government had made overtures to opposition groups.

One is a Shiite Muslim organization led by Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim, based in Iran and apparently operating with the knowledge of that country's Government. Others include Kurdish parties or parties led by members of Iraq's Kurdish minority.

Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, said in Washington recently that the open appeal to opposition groups was ''a very fundamental change'' in American policy, but that it was still in its fledgling stages.

Mr. Berger, who acknowledged that ''change will take time,'' offered some general incentives to Mr. Hussein's opponents. ''We will also stand ready to help a new government in Iraq that respects the rights of its people and meets its obligations to the world,'' he said. ''We would work to ease economic sanctions against such a new Iraq as quickly as possible. We would work to relieve Iraq's massive economic debts.''

But Mr. Berger's broadest appeal was to Iraq's neighbors.

''At stake is the stability of Arab and Muslim states, our future relationship with them and our fundamental strategic and economic interests in the Middle East,'' he said. ''At stake is our ability to fight terror, avert regional conflict, promote peace and protect the security of our friends and allies.''

-------------------- New Inspections in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 8 (AP) -- United Nations arms inspection teams initiated a series of surprise searches in Iraq today for banned weapons despite angry assertions from the Government that the searches amounted to harassment.

The official Iraqi News Agency said the inspectors made 32 surprise visits, the highest since they returned to Baghdad last month.

State-run newspapers quoted Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, on a visit to Moscow, as saying there was a limit to Iraq's compliance.